Exhibition a prized display guaranteed to surprise and delight

The beauty of printmaking is that it is a friendly, democratic art form that can seamlessly cross international borders without engaging with huge expenses for freight and insurance. Working with unique multiples, the unit cost, in most instances, is relatively modest and being generally a work on paper, it can normally be simply rolled up in a tube or sent as a small parcel through ordinary mail.

To organise an international art competition, or an acquisitive exhibition for paintings or sculptures, would logistically be out of reach for all but the largest well-funded arts organisations, such as the Royal Academy in London. However, international print prize competitions are relatively commonplace and number in the hundreds. The latest print prize arrival on the printmaking scene is the inaugural Megalo 2019 International Print Prize with an exhibition of finalists now on display at their gallery in Kingston.

The nuts and bolts of this print prize are a first prize $10,000, second prize $5000 and a couple of minor prizes of $2500 and $1000. The three judges are Dr Jane Kinsman from the National Gallery of Australia, where she is head of international art and for a number of decades has been the senior curator of International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books; Basil Hall, a master printer and Ingeborg Hansen, the director of Megalo. The prize attracted 367 entries from 246 artists from 31 countries, where contestants were requested to send digital photographs of a maximum of two works accompanied by a modest fee of $40 for the first work and $20 for the second.

The only contentious stipulation was that “digital prints” were ineligible, unless playing a minor assistance role to intaglio, relief or screenprint techniques. Although I understand demarcation disputes between digital prints and photographs, personally, I am not in favour of any restrictions put on creativity. The digital horse has well and truly bolted and can no longer be contained by any gatekeeper.

From this initial field of entrants, 37 finalists were selected to make up a very strong, diverse and impressive exhibition. About 40 per cent of the finalists are international artists and constitute the main strength of the exhibition. The Australian printmakers are a familiar entity, where highlights in the show include Antonia Aitken’s elaborate woodcut and lasercut plywood dimensional print; Darren Bryant’s ingenious game with optics; David Frazer’s and Rew Hanks’ breath-takingly detailed slices of landscape, Cleo Wilkinson’s mezzotints, Surya Bajracharya’s moody lithographic monotype and artists books by Dianne Fogwell and Silvi Glattauer.

There are also a couple of exceptional prints by Robert Hague – one of his personal post-colonial fables – and Glenda Orr’s superb symphony of axes, menacing and beautiful at the same time. Nicola Hooper’s morbid installation, where the association with a deadly mosquito-borne virus subverts childhood innocence, is an effective and elaborate three-dimensional work.

Polish graphic artists have had an international prominence for many decades but are relatively rarely seen in Australia. Two of my favourite prints in this show are from Poland: Karol Pomykala’s One Direction 2, where working on a huge scale – the sheet of paper measures 140 by 200 centimetres – in this most subtle and exacting single block linocut creates an eerie pattern of humanity moving from light to darkness. It is not only the intricacy of the carving that keeps you spellbound, but also the subtlety when you examine the spreading colour gradations.

The other great print is Marcin Bialas’s Other Way 5, a Piranesi-like architectural labyrinth conceived as an etching with a brilliant intervention with a wedge of mezzotint. Both artists have an international standing as major emerging artists aged about 40 and are scooping a host of prizes. Other Polish artists of outstanding merit at this exhibition include Natalia Kwiatkowska and Anna Trojanowska.

The young and versatile Ukrainian artist, Olesya Dzhurayeva, in her linocut combines atmospheric effects with an intimate reality to create a slightly enigmatic and tantalising reality.

This is a fabulous exhibition that is guaranteed to surprise and delight.